Friday, August 19, 2016

Ultra-conservative Russian MP Yelena Mizulina, best known for successfully introducing for the law banning so-called gay propaganda, introduced a new bill to the State Duma in July proposing the decriminalisation of violence within families.

“Battery carried out toward family members should be an administrative offence,” said Mizulina, who is chair of the Duma committee on family, women and children’s affairs and is now a senator in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament. “You don’t want people to be imprisoned for two years and labelled a criminal for the rest of their lives for a slap.”

Except of course it's not "a slap": its serious, pervasive violence. 36,000 Russian women are abused by their partners every day. 40% of all violent crime in Russia is domestic violence. If an MP suggested that they "decriminalise" violence by organised crime, they'd be laughed at. And yet apparently the idea of decriminalising violence by men against women gets taken seriously.

The scary thing is that Russia is such a bigoted society at the moment that this could actually pass. The mere fact that it is being discussed tells you that there is something incredibly wrong with their society and their political system.